I go on a good many adventure-type trips. Whenever I go on one, it's always potentially going to be the setting for one of my books. I pay more attention to certain aspects than some other people might. Sometimes I use them, sometimes I don't. Most of the books I write are based on experiences I've had to some extent.
Every cell in our body, whether it's a bacterial cell or a human cell, has a genome. You can extract that genome - it's kind of like a linear tape - and you can read it by a variety of methods. Similarly, like a string of letters that you can read, you can also change it. You can write, you can edit it, and then you can put it back in the cell.
Don't let anyone tell you there's only one way to write.
That would really be my fantasy - maybe just do three shows a year and each year in a different city, just singing for the people who really want to see it, and then just write for other people. I do love to sing, but I'm just as happy singing in the bathtub, you know?
I write to explore something that fascinates me, and I write the way I do because it is the only way I know how to write.
Writing is a very lonely occupation. To write you need to concentrate, to concentrate you need to lock yourself away. No distractions; you want your stream of thought uninterrupted.
'Jurassic Park' and 'Star Wars' shoved me into loving sci-fi and film in general when I was a barely coherent 3-year-old. And 'Lord of the Rings' took me to another planet entirely. Before that series, I knew I loved writing, but after, I knew that I had to write.
To write long pieces - or not even long pieces - to write stuff like the columns of Red Smith and people like that - they're different then what it is today. Everything today is based on x's and o's. Inside baseball, it's all, 'Who's gonna win?' or you're comparing things - it's not as thoughtful as it used to be.
I write pretty much year-round, but I definitely do more when a deadline is looming.
I tend to write a pretty half and half split of, like, slow, morose things and then sort of more upbeat stuff.
I try to write about internal experience versus the external self. I like to present ideas, but not package them neatly.
The things I write about are the things that I am passionate about, interested in, and fighting for in my life.
'The Means' is about power. I have access to political insiders who helped me write a portrait of the real day-to-day in politics, which turned out to be crazier than Wall Street.
I like to write in all different genres. I just like a new challenge.
With 'Attachments,' my goal was to write a really good romantic comedy. I wanted the reader to be smiling throughout.
When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.
The reason I quit being a sales manager over twenty years now is because I hate elevator pitches. I want to write stories and show people what's in them when they read them, not tell them all about it ahead of time.
You have to understand that while I pre-plot the meta story of a given book, I often have no idea of what will happen on the next page, let alone the next chapter. That's what makes it fun for me; I write the books the same way many people read them.
My son was five months old, and I built a makeshift studio in my living room so that I could do the attachment parenting approach and write the record at the same time. That was fortuitous, that we could build that in the house.
I'm not the sad sack that people might think I am. But I think that if I didn't write and perform, I probably would be.
I tend to write longer narrative pieces after I've finished writing a novel - when the fiction's finished and put away, and I have a chance to take all the ideas that are buried inside of my novels and work with them directly.
If Tom Clancy didn't write any Op-Centers, he would be $60 million less rich.
Here is my theory on this one. If you write things down, if there is a mystery and you try and explain it, once you've written it down for permanent, in due time, it'll be proven stupid.
I wish I didn't have ever to sign my long name on the cover of a book, and I wish I could write a story that would seem absolutely true to the child who hears it and to myself.
Women who write thrillers are called 'dark.' Male writers are called 'powerful.'
I love research so much that I do an enormous amount; it helps put off the moment of starting to write the story.
Neal Stephenson is great. He can write about a white wall for six pages, and it sounds fascinating. I read the whole 'Baroque Cycle' and 'Cryptonomicon.'
I'd love to write with some people from the U.K., like Ed Sheeran, Emeli Sande... there's a very long list.
It's just as well that I write in the same facile way wherever I am - no blocks or anguish, no contemplation, no elaborate revision, no need for love-tokens or nice views.
Someone like Katy Perry - I like her writing because I listen to music as a songwriter. I like a lot of her songs - like, 'Firework' is a song that I think I could write.
I've been asked this question so many times, do you feel you need to write a book for adults? No, I don't need to write a book for adults.
When I first start writing a song, I usually write the title first, then the song, and I'll sing the song in my head and think of a visual of the song. If I can't think of a visual behind the song, I'll throw the song away.
In the music business, we all do different things, but we sit there and admire other people who can write a song differently or sing differently. It's not so competitive.
When you sit down and write a song, you kind of have the idea for the song, and you sit there at the piano and you kinda just write it. And then of course later there's some dinking around with it and changing some stuff.
I think that usually the risk in trying to write children in fiction is the tendency to make them too cute or something.
I grew up listening to Nick Drake. Without him, I would not write music - and 'Pink Moon' is my favourite LP.
